A company without a permanent CEO, with a growing dividend and declining market share. Welcome to HP

For the ninth consecutive year it has increased its dividend, in the last quarter it raised its full-year earnings outlook, and nearly half of the computers it sold now contain an AI chip, compared to less than a third last year. On top of that, the company generates almost $3 billion in free cash flow annually and has just signed a strategic partnership with OpenAI. Yet its stock has plunged by more than a third since November 2024 and today trades where it was a year and a half ago, as if it were a failing company rather than a technology veteran with rising earnings.

HP Inc. shares have been trading in a range between $20 and $25 in recent weeks, well below their all-time highs from late 2024 when they traded above $36. The market values the company, with a market capitalization of around $22 billion, at a price/earnings ratio of about 9x and a dividend yield of nearly 5%, while HP also faces structural questions about the future of the PC market in the AI era. Over the last 52 weeks the stock has lost roughly 12% of its value, and the company is also undergoing a CEO transition. The combination of low valuation, a stable dividend, and an uncertain medium-term strategy makes HP an interesting but complicated investment case that deserves a closer look at the business, finances, and risks.

Company overview

HP Inc. has carried its current name since November 2015, when the original Hewlett-Packard, founded in a Palo Alto garage in 1939 by Bill Hewlett and David Packard, split into two companies. The corporate infrastructure, servers, and enterprise services were spun off into the newly formed Hewlett Packard Enterprise, while the parent company kept the consumer and commercial hardware – i.e., PCs and printers – and was renamed HP Inc. Legally, it is the continuation of the same corporation founded in 1939, including its dividend payment history, which has been uninterrupted since 1965, and its original ticker symbol $HPQ.

The company is now headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and operates in two main segments, Personal Systems and Printing, plus a smaller Corporate Investments segment. By shipment market share, HP is the world’s second-largest PC maker after Lenovo and ahead of Dell, with a global distribution network and a broad customer base split between consumers and business clients. About two-thirds of revenue comes from outside the United States, making it sensitive to exchange rates and regional demand but also less dependent on a single market.